By now you’ve heard CISPA — the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA)—passed the U.S. House of Representatives last night in Washington DC — at 6:30 p.m. by 248 to 168. (206 Republicans and 42 democrats voted for it). It was a surprise vote. Scheduled for a debate and vote today, lawmakers moved it through last night.

The inevitable Anonymous-like tweets are eking out, urging tweet bombs against supporters like David Axelrod. lol.

By now you’ve heard CISPA — the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA)—passed the U.S. House of Representatives last night in Washington DC — at 6:30 p.m. by 248 to 168. (206 Republicans and 42 democrats voted for it). It was a surprise vote. Scheduled for a debate and vote today, lawmakers moved it through last night.

Update: Check out the inevitable Anonymous -like tweeted threats around CISPA lower down. A call to take down Axelrod!

Our +Christopher Poirier, based near Washington, said simply: … find out who voted what way.

From +Ant Pruitt at aNewDomain.net, “I always believed country’s leadership was full of sharp, intelligent people. Now, I think it’s full of something else.

Our Internet is a web of connectivity where information is freely shared between consenting parties. Now knowing that my ISP can just hand over my data without warrant disgusts me. My data is my data. The ISP should protect their customer’s privacy and not just give it up freely because they want to protect themselves from scrutiny. There should be some type of due process in all of this and a process to keep my data safe.

It’s interesting. If you get into the meat of the bill, it’s actually on the companies on what they provide the government. The bill it’s self does not affirmatively provide government the ability to have access to private data. In other words, the companies will have to give the data up..and some have already said they will. The anger, or at least part of it, should be directly at the companies saying right now that they WILL provide our data to the government. Either way, it’s too early to tell for sure what the senate and WH will actually do. (If you recall and as randall above mentions..they said the same thing about not passing and Vetoing NDAA 12..and it DID pass and WAS signed..)

All of the “controls” in the bill seem okay…with two exceptions:

1.) all information shared will be except from freedom of information act (FOIA) requests. (This is designed, in theory, to protect potential proprietary information being released, but also can be used to shield all activities under the act.) This is a concern of the ACLU and others.

2.) information shared with the government will be used for cyber security AND anything involving “national security.” As advocates have stated, this rather “open door” part of the bill is some what worrisome.

All in all, if passed the actual policy will be at least 60 days out from signature as the ODNI will have to implement actual policy during that period according to the bill language.

Just some more food for thought. Time will tell, still plenty of time to add more amendments in the senate..etc..

It used to be that I felt okay when something like this happened – no need to actively react – because the Supreme Court was a gatekeeper of the Constitution and usually made sane decisions. Clearly with the current Court members that gatekeeping has stopped and they are making poor decisions. No longer can we trust the Court to act to preserve the Constitution or defend the rights of the average citizen. So if we feel strongly about a potential law we must act before it becomes a law, since little is likely to stop it once that happens.